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Mixed report card after Australia's biennial health check-up

ELEANOR HALL: The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's latest analysis shows that Australians are living longer but that more of us have lifestyle-related chronic diseases.

These diseases, like diabetes and kidney problems, are not only debilitating, they're costly for the national health budget.

The institute also found that Indigenous Australians are likely to suffer from them at higher rates.

Rachael Brown has our report.

RACHAEL BROWN: Australia's biennial check-up has found citizens are living 25 years longer than a century ago.

A boy born today should reach his 80th birthday, and a girl can expect to live until she's 84.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's report finds the country has a lot to be proud of.

Its director is David Kalisch.

DAVID LAKISCH: Increasingly longer life expectancy, have lower death rates recorded for cancer and many other diseases and a health system that people say they're mostly happy with.

RACHAEL BROWN: But there are some doctor's orders. The country needs to address its chronic diseases, which are the leading cause of illness, disease and death.

David Kalisch says a lot are linked to behavioural factors.

DAVID LAKISCH: Such as smoking, physical inactivity, poor nutrition and harmful use of alcohol and that in turn can lead to obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which can bring on various chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and mental health issues.

RACHAEL BROWN: Three in five adults are now overweight or obese, which puts Australia on par with the United States.

DAVID LAKISCH: It's not a race that you want to win. We're seeing overweight and obesity developing in our children and young people and so it really is an issue for Australians to just take a good hard look at it.

RACHAEL BROWN: How much of these chronic diseases could be prevented?

DAVID LAKISCH: The World Health Organization estimates that up to 80 per cent of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes and up to a third of all cancers could be prevented by eliminating smoking, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol.

One of the disturbing things that we did find in our report was that of all the diseases that are around these days, diabetes is the one that has the honour of having increasing mortality over the last 20 years whereas most other diseases we've seen and recording falls in mortality.

RACHAEL BROWN: As the toll increases, so does the nation's health bill.

Australia spends about 9.5 per cent of its GDP on the health system, which is on par with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

But Mr Kalisch says it's taking up a greater proportion of government revenue at state and federal levels.

DAVID LAKISCH: Since the GFC, governments are now spending just over 25 per cent of their total revenues on health care.

RACHAEL BROWN: And how is this bill tracking with inflation?

DAVID LAKISCH: We now spend probably about 70 per cent more on health than we did about a decade ago after adjusting for population and also inflation.

RACHAEL BROWN: As for Australia's Indigenous communities, there's been health improvements in recent years, including falling infant and child mortality rates.

Circulatory and respiratory diseases are also declining.

FADWA AL-YAMAN: And that's possibly linked to a decline in smoking rates as well.

FADWA AL-YAMAN: Smoking rates fell for Indigenous Australians within the last 10 years from 51 per cent to 44 per cent. That's quite a significant decline.

RACHAEL BROWN: And what do you attribute that to? Greater awareness?

FADWA AL-YAMAN: But also there has been quite a significant investment in anti-smoking programs over the last four or five years as part of the Indigenous chronic disease health care.

RACHAEL BROWN: Indigenous communities are still overrepresented in statistics for things like kidney disease and diabetes.

FADWA AL-YAMAN: Absolutely. I mean we've seen significant decline, but we still a gap. So for example, like end stage renal disease is seven time, the gap is currently seven times the non-Indigenous rate and diabetes is 3.3 times the non-Indigenous rate.

RACHAEL BROWN: Dr Yaman says investments are being made through chronic disease packages, some of which focus on child and maternal health.

FADWA AL-YAMAN: A lot of things happen very early on in life so there has been investment in antenatal care, ensuring that women get the right advice during pregnancy so they can actually not smoke or drink. We know that drinking and smoking during pregnancy affects the birth weight and low birth weight is linked to chronic conditions later in life and also increased mortality early in life.

RACHAEL BROWN: She says Medicare rebated items, like access to health checks, is paying off, as are improvements in education, which correlate to less people adopting unhealthy habits.